1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a facsimile apparatus which reproduces a read document image on a document using an electrostatic recording system of an image receiving unit.
2. Description of Prior Art
FIG. 6 shows a general structure of a facsimile apparatus using an electrostatic recording system. This apparatus includes transmitting unit 2 within an upper portion of housing 1 and receiving unit 3 within a lower portion of the housing.
In the transmitting unit 2, documents 5 on paper feed table 4 are separated sheet by sheet by feed roller 6 and frictional separating plate 7 and fed into housing 1. The thus fed document 5 is conveyed by conveyor rollers 8 and discharged by discharge rollers 9 to paper discharge table 10. Between conveyor rollers 8 and discharge rollers 9, document 5 is illuminated by fluorescent lamp 11 and the reflected light image is imaged onto a line sensor 14 via mirror 12 and lens 13. Line sensor 14 converts the image into an electrical signal which is then transmitted.
At receiving unit 3, sheets of recording paper 16 within cassette 15 are taken sheet by sheet by feed roller 17 and conveyed by converter rollers 18 and discharged by discharge rollers 19 to discharge paper table 20. The received image is converted to a laser beam which is then imaged onto photosensitive body 23 via polygon mirror 21 and mirror 22 to thereby be formed as an electrostatic latent image on body 23. This latent image is developed by developing unit 24 to thereby form a toner image onto photosensitive body 23. This toner image is then transferred to conveyed recording paper 16 by transfer corotron 25. The toner image transferred to the recording paper 16 is fixed to recording paper 16 by fixing rollers 26 provided before discharge rollers 19.
There are many facsimile devices of this type which are capable of reproducing an image in a document, read by a reading system of the transmitting unit thereof, using the recording mechanism of the receiving unit thereof. Namely, when a document is to be copied, transmitting unit 2 and receiving unit 3 are driven together to turn on and off a laser oscillator (not shown) in accordance with the image data read by line sensor 14. The laser beam from the laser oscillator is imaged onto photosensitive body 23 via polygon mirror 21 and mirror 22 to thereby reproduces the document image onto recording paper 16.
As just described above, when reproduction is performed by a facsimile device of this type, the image information in document 5 is divided into pixel data by line sensor 14, so that a picture of divided pixels or a digital latent image is formed on photosensitive body 23. Therefore, the quality of the image recorded on recording paper 16 is influenced by the resolution of line sensor 14 or the size of the pixels. Since the copied image provided by this facsimile device is a digital recorded image, as mentioned above, it is not good in quality compared to the copied image obtained by a regular electrophotography type reproduction machine.